Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. in Arlington, VA received $15 million for Task Order 0020 under its $500 million maximum "emergency response" contract with the US government. DID covered the particulars of that contract on Monday; they set out a number of specifications that leave just a handful of global firms able to meet them.

Task Order 0020 is a cost reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity construction capabilities contract for post-Katrina recovery efforts in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for "unwatering activities" in Plaquemines, East and West basins, New Orleans, LA.

Such was the sense from the president's speech, what with all the government programs, spending and planning. We'll see if he walks the walk, or if he's just talking the talk (as usual).

I am cautiously optimistic, because such a horrid situation demands hope on the part of all of us. But I still carry a healthy amount of skepticism, because everything else this president has done has been so ineptly and incompetently executed.

And there's the question of how we can afford this, when we're spending all of our money spreading, um, freedom around the world.

What do they know that we don't? What are they afraid of? What do they have to hide?

When it comes to actions this week, you can't call the Republicans inconsistent. While they spent three days telling Judge John G. Roberts, Jr., "Don't answer questions," they employed the same strategy regarding the Katrina aftermath, telling Democrats, "Don't ask questions." When the Democrats insisted, the Republicans said, "Can't make me! Nyah nyah nyah!"

We'll see about that, because it's not just Democrats who want to know. Everyone who's not in power wants to know. The sad fact is that the evidence of failure of government on all levels -- especially the federal level -- is out there in plain sight, in the hundreds of thousands of homeless, in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dead, in the utterly devastated towns in Louisiana and Mississippi.

What are they thinking, these Republicans? Do they really believe that they can just spin their way out of responsibility for their dismantling of government programs that would have saved lives?

Tonight, President Bush is going to spin for the nation how he's really on top of things, and how he supposedly really wants to find out what went wrong? His plan? You won't believe it:

Throw a whole lotta money at the problem.

Yes, you heard it right, folks. All Republican pretense at fiscal responsibility is gone now, and our Republican President, who has run up the biggest deficits in the history of human civilization, is doing what Republicans accused Democrats of doing for decades: Throwing money at the problem.

Now of course we need some major investment in our infrastructure, and it's going to cost us big time. But for fuck's sake, we also have to be fiscally responsible. If we run the economy into the toilet, what good is that going to do? Maybe it's time we faced facts and did some real draw-downs from Iraq, the boondoggle that is killing Iraqis in record numbers, getting our young and brave soldiers and Marines killed and maimed, and generating on a daily basis a whole lotta ill will towards the United States. What's that costing us? $7.4 million an hour? It sure seems like that kind of money would come in pretty handy right now.

Once upon a time, the United States was the biggest creditor in the world. Now we're the biggest debtor in history. Once upon a time, the United States was respected and admired around the world. Only 4 years ago, we had the entire world, even our historical enemies, at our side, sharing in our mourning of 9/11. Our president managed to fuck that up pretty good, and now our historical allies view us with mistrust.

And are we any safer? With our military tapped out in a vaguely-defined peacekeeping role in Iraq? With our federal deficit leaping up like a firestorm? With our infrastructure crumbling thanks to anti-government-politics-inspired neglect and dismantling? With our Homeland Security unable to deal with a predicted natural disaster, let alone an unpredicted terror attack? One really wonders.

And now the Republicans don't want an investigation they don't do themselves. To them, priority number one isn't making America safer and stronger, it's doing something about those awful poll numbers. They're dropping every day! Alarm! Alarm! Political emergency!

What do they have to hide? What are they afraid of? What do they know that we don't?

I gotta say, it's pretty scary to me when I find myself agreeing with Newt Gingrich. After blasting President Bush earlier this month, the man who made his name with the Contract On America, cutting anything and everything to "starve the beast," was on ABC's This Week talking about how we need "effective government" with progressive policies.

I noticed him a few months ago on C-SPAN, talking about this electronic medical records initiative he's been promoting with Hillary Clinton, where it struck me just how he was positioning himself against the dominionists. Now he was going against the conservative script from which he made his 1990s political career, asserting strongly that there definitely is an important role for government to play -- effective government.

And just so you had appropriate context, George Will wore his ass for a hat and offered a contrasting view, blaming the suffering of New Orleans on the breakdown of family, which by the way, he notes, is most striking among black families. (Poor incurious George the pundit never stopped to think that maybe it's urban poverty that causes the breakup of families. But he hasn't changed his hairstyle since he was 5, so we can't expect him to actually change his sclerotic preconceptions as an adult, now, can we?)

(Fareed Zacharia did the public service of pointing out that Gingrich is now speaking out against the very policies he enacted as Speaker. Thank you for reminding our viewers, Fareed.)

The tide is turning against the venalitans. Today's would-be 9/11 war rally turned out a piffle. Nobody's missing "Brownie." AndeverytimeaRepublicanopenshismouth, garbagecomesout. (One would think that means hope for more progressive Republican politicians, but now that Arnold Schwarznegger has gone girly man and flip-flopped on gay marriage in California, maybe the political realities intra-GOP won't allow for populist policies.)

There's nothing like privileged white boys complaining about what their social inferiors are supposedly getting away with. The implications behind people who invoke "welfare" when excusing the vile mistreatment of the people who were left behind in New Orleans are staggering--ultimately, the argument boils down to the idea that black person who doesn't have a job making money for someone else doesn't deserve to live. Not nearly as far removed from the slave owners of yore as they probably congratulate themselves for being.